Snowflakes

We all melt.

         There were four snow flakes on the window. She reached up with hand to press a single fingertip against the clear surface choked with frost. Her touch created a halo of heat condensation that began to ring from the outer edges of fingertip.

         "What are you doing?" The question was a distant rumble of hazy amusement from behind her, the speaker’s voice smoker rasped through silence, filling the space between her and him with the faint tingling of amusement along with curiosity.

         "Killing snowflakes," finally murmured in response. Her blue eyes were fixated on the ring her body heat made on the window, far-away in thought.  

         "Killing--what?" His muddled question was colored faintly in ever growing amusement with a backdrop of what she’d come to know as him eventually rousing him self from the bed; rumpled sheet crinkling as well as the soft pat of bare feet upon floor. She imagined him having the usual bedraggled hair, spiked riotously from pillows embrace. She heard him curse when his feet touched upon the chill of the floor, listened as he made his way across room toward her.

         "Snowflakes," repeated once more. Her tone was not condescending but somehow that of a mother explaining to child. "I'm killing them,” she added quickly. “They deserve it."

         There was a few breaths worth of a pause when he hesitated to ask her because she always said things that made little to no sense to him. She was his Rubik’s cube that he had not been able to figure out how to align all of her colors. He inhaled slowly, a sign that he would take the plunge this time and ask anyway.

         "Why are you killing snowflakes?" He spoke the words against eggshells made of spun sugar.

         "They lied," immediately answered. She had not hesitated, as if she’d been waiting all this time for him to ask and now the words had to tumble one after the other after the other from thin line of mouth.  His confusion seemed tangible as he stood so close as to have the air of his words stir a select few hairs at the crown of her head.

         "They lied," he repeated evenly. He was not a simpleton; he was cajoling her to please explain this terrible feminine vagueness.

         "They lied to me, they are not all different. They are not all unique and special.”  Her head recoiled slowly as she informed him at last the reasoning behind her war against them inspecting her handiwork with a painter’s fine eye for brushstrokes.  The mark of her warm fingertip quickly faded when she removed touch from the window, yet the evidence that a snowflake had, indeed, died remained on the other side of the glass in the form of single liquid bead.

         "And, neither are we," her deceptively simplistic conclusion came before he had the chance to speak any further. Then she turned to him, blue eyes traveling the length of bare chest in summer lazy patterns which locked in the end with his eyes. Some fathomless mystery remained shadowed behind her look in which he realized he had never known; perhaps could never know.

         He could not find any words for her in return.

Reviews

[The Musings of Mary H.]

A delightful read! I was captivated to the end. Snowflakes...I have a different view of them now. Very descriptive and intelligent wording! Great work!

Mary